Recollection
by kiboeme
Summary: I remember. I remember every age, every time, every evil and every Hero that rose to put an end to it. I can recall being hunted, transformed into stone or trapped in a prison, stolen away to be made a villain's prize. I remember that you did all of those. But you did them differently. Zelda is granted a new perspective on the eternal cycle. K. One-shot. ZelGan. What's a plot?


I remember.  
I remember every age, every time, every evil and every Hero that rose to put an end to it.  
I can recall being hunted, transformed into stone or trapped in a prison, stolen away to be made a villain's prize.  
I remember that you did all of those.

But you did them differently.  
You conned your way into my kingdom under the false intent of peace between our people.  
I realize now that you may not have been so false. To you, destroying Hyrule was the only way to ensure that your sisters survived the next decades.  
My father couldn't see through you. I could. I knew what your intentions were the moment you set foot in the castle.  
I wasn't surprised when the king died a mysterious death and you seized the throne, then the Triforce.  
I wasn't surprised when it split beneath your touch.

What _did_ surprise me was that you let me go.  
You let me run and you didn't try to find me. You weren't petty like your predecessors; you had your kingdom. You didn't need me.

I remember the way you looked at me when it was just the two of us, thousands of feet off the ground in the spire of your castle.  
Link was slowly pushing through your defenses. I was imprisoned in a crystal of your magic.  
You sat there and played your organ, the same melody over and over until I could hum along to it. Until I knew every note and realized you were trying to tell me something.  
The music said for you the things you would've been loath to let pass your lips.  
You cast me a glance as you stood to great Link, your death.  
I wandered if the Hero ever noticed what your eyes screamed.

In a younger world you made another bid for freedom.  
Link wasn't there to stop you this time, but I was.  
We were forced to bury both you and my beloved kingdom beneath the sea. But you were not dead the way Hyrule now was. Only restrained.

Again I hid from you for years, though I knew no better than you whom the pirate Tetra really was.  
Technically Link found me and my father awoke me, but you were as awed by me as if I had been in a disguise as intentional as the last one.  
Even though I was the most resilient me I have ever been, you treated me tenderly.  
You could have killed me. You probably should have.  
But I heard what you whispered in my ear when you thought I was sleeping.  
You couldn't bring yourself to spill my blood.

That time, you died.  
The memory is bittersweet.

There was a world where the Hero died.  
You made me watch as you ran the green tunic through with your sword, staining the windows of my throne room with his crimson blood.  
I remember your smirk when you turned back toward me.  
You had won, and you took my kingdom as your reward.  
But for that moment, you were begging for my approval.

I was one of the few who could stand in your way.  
You held a poisoned dagger over my head, your foot pinning me down at the waist and a magic tie binding my hands above my head.  
In our struggle I you had ripped my clothes. My entire right side was bared to you in naked fury.  
Still, your eyes stayed on my face.  
When I woke several centuries later to the sound of Link's Triforce chiming with mine, I was clothed in the loveliest dress I had ever worn.  
And the taste of your lips was still in my mouth.

You rose again, literally flinging Hyrule into an age of shadow.  
Your minion was not one with your mind. He hampered your plans.  
I remember watching your anger burn through another's eyes when you realized that I had died to thwart your plans.  
When you brought my body back I was confused.  
I didn't have a soul, I was just an empty shell.  
But I could tell that you were disappointed with whatever you had managed to create.  
Eventually the body you had recreated was useful to you. Link and Midna hated to hurt me, and you used my image to attack them.  
I was quickly cleansed of you and my soul returned.  
Yet I could not forget the way you had touched the lifeless body.  
Not when it felt so good.

That was the last time I was able to see you.  
Across all the realms, there was someone else.  
Vaati.  
Aganahim.  
Onox.  
Veran.  
Bellum.  
Malladus.  
Yuga.  
None of them terrified me like you had, none of them caused me to truly fear for my kingdom the way you had.  
Sometimes you were there, but it wasn't you any more.  
I knew the way you looked, moved, and acted.  
Whatever that boar was, I saw none of you in it.

Just like you, just like Link and everyone else who was trapped in the cycle with us, I have finally been freed.  
Hyrule has ended, not at your hands but at the hands of the goddesses.  
They tired of their game, and so they destroyed it.  
They pulled our spirits out of the wreckage and let us finally see the whole plan, finally recover the memories of every life we had lived and every pain we had ever felt.  
I could feel Link's spirit writhing for days, burning so brightly and screeching so loudly that the sudden silence was hardly bearable. When he fought he was nothing more than a goddess' tool, left to deal with the deeds of his hands once she returned the ability to think. Each life had pained him. I could not imagine the weight of dozens.  
You did not react very much. You had only lived a few lives, and even in those you had a vague recollection of the man you had been previously. Not like I, who had her memories obliterated with the passing of each body. Not like Link, who wouldn't have wanted to remember if he could. No, you were a steady flame, as collected and eerily comfortable as you had been on earth.

But I had a revelation. I could finally see everything, what I had and had not realized. The moments I had never remembered when I was reborn.  
You.  
You were everywhere.  
Your touch, your scent, your silhouette against a burning sky.  
The sound of your voice and the rumble of your laugh.  
The steady hum of your piece of the Triforce, a low roiling current against Courage's upbeat thrumming and Wisdom's steady murmur.

Finally I see what the goddesses had me forget between births.  
Finally I know what belonged in the gaps of my memory of lives.

Our caresses, our brushes, our kisses, our words.  
Our secrets, our skin.  
Our promises.  
Crying out and consuming one another.

I can feel your spirit beside me.

I creep toward you, reaching out to you.  
We have no voices. We don't need them.

They say that if you stretch a band far enough, it will rip before it breaks. You'll be able to tell.  
In that moment, I could tell that our tie to the goddesses was slipping.  
Slipping from tying our feet and moving up to our necks.  
The Triforce.  
The vows for vengeance and protection.

Like Link, we fade.  
They are done with their game, for the pieces have broken apart.  
But that is alright.

I remember.


End file.
